Wrongthink Trumps Identity

Back in the early 90s, I worked with a young female engineer who was a hard-core feminist and heavily involved in NOW (the National Organization for Women). We got to be friends, and she gave me a lot of insight into the movement.

At the time, the rule seemed to be “always support the woman, and sort out the policy divides later.” She recognized the various factions within, including, among others, the big rifts regarding feminist thought on pornography and prostitution.

Times have changed, and not just in the feminist movement.

We all know that, today, wrongthink trumps identity when it comes to progressive politics and social justice.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Kirstjen Nielsen, and Pam Bondi, all women whose politics are apparently “incorrect,” have recently been harassed by members of the public, including men, while out engaging in activities unrelated to politics. Yet there’s been nary a peep of protest from women’s rights groups.

Milo Yiannopoulos, clearly a member of a protected class, gets nothing of the sort, since he says the wrong things and attacks the wrong targets.

Black conservatives (and libertarians) like Clarence Thomas, Thomas Sowell, Herman Cain, Condoleezza Rice, Stacey Dash, and Ben Carson are loathed by the Left and called insulting and racist names like “Uncle Tom,” simply because they aren’t party-line liberals.

One of the hallmarks of today’s leftism is found in the last chapter of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, where the Seven Commandments of Animalism are eliminated in favor of the one diktat that “All Animals Are Equal, But Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others.” This is the nature of social justice today. Some are “more equal” than others. In other words, a structured and specified inequality has replaced Thomas Jefferson’s self-evident truth that all are equal.

This inequality is defended as a means of correcting both past injustices and present-day systemic inequalities. In practice, it involves both societal and government coercion, and typically reduces individuals to a tally-sheet of their identity group memberships.

It’s also forever, thanks to an emerging re-definition of the word “racism.” Today, we are told, racism isn’t simply prejudice against another based solely on skin color (nor bigotry prejudice based on gender, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, etc), but that it requires consideration of “power.” In other words, if you don’t have the “power” bestowed by society, you cannot be racist. Thus, a minority that says “kill whitey” isn’t racist, and, in some people’s eyes, isn’t even a bigot. This is ludicrous on its face, and yet it’s a genuinely held belief of many progressives.

Being white makes you a de facto racist, with your only remedy being active effort on your part to balance an unbalanced scale. Thus, you must subordinate yourself, your opinions and beliefs, and your pursuit of happiness to the eternal remediation of racism and bigotry in society. And, thus, you must not thing wrong. You must not differ in opinion. By extension, anyone who might join you in thinking wrong and differing in opinion from the prescribed dogma is as guilty as you are. Women, gays, and minorities who don’t share the required belief set are traitors, and as such are treated worse than enemies.

Today, a genuine desire to be color-blind, to treat everyone as an equal, is itself considered racist by the Left. Merely using the term among the wrong people is now a declaration that you’re a wrong-thinker, that you are an enemy of the cause. You may live a perfectly virtuous existence when it comes to how you treat others, you may live Luke 6:31 every day, but that’s no longer good enough, and it doesn’t matter if you are a straight white man or a gay black trans-woman. If you think wrong, your identity doesn’t protect you, and it never will.

The philosopher George Santayana observed that “Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.” It seems, today, that social justice fanatics have forgotten the aim of the civil rights movement, as elucidated by Martin Luther King, “a nation where [people] will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

It is a requirement of modern progressivism, social justice, and the concept of intersectionality that people be judged by the “color of their skin.” The “content of their character” matters not at all. The purest, most egalitarian, most charitable, and noble soul counts for nothing if you don’t adhere strictly to the required dogma. There’s no end-game in this. There’s no chance of a free, harmonious society under such a toxic worldview. There’s only continued strife, discord, and destruction.

I am twice-retired, a former rocket engineer and a former small business owner. At the very least, it makes for interesting party conversation. I'm also a life-long libertarian, I engage in an expanse of entertainments, and I squabble for sport.

Nowadays, I spend a good bit of my time arguing politics and editing this website.